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Xavier coach receives advocacy award
By Rebecca Bostic, rbostic@catholicsun.org
May 15, 2008
Sr. Lynn Winsor, BVM, has spent the last 30 years inspiring girls to excellence in her role as the athletic director at Xavier College Preparatory.
Her achievements are many — including the golf team’s remarkable 26 state championship victories — but Sr. Lynn’s list of awards just got longer.
The Phoenix Women’s Sports Association, which has worked to empower women through sports since 2001, recognized Sr. Lynn May 2. The association awarded the sister with its first ever Advocacy Award at the fifth annual Celebration of Girls and Women in Sports Awards Dinner.
She holds a spot in not only the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association Hall of Fame, but also the Arizona Golf Hall of Fame.
“I know of no other high school athletic director — male or female — who has done more to advance girls’ high school sports and athletics in Arizona,” said Sr. Joan Fitzgerald, BVM, principal of Xavier College Preparatory. “She is driven to provide equal opportunities for girls, to obtain facilities that equal those of boys, and to ensure that high school girls get the recognition they deserve for the skills and talent they possess.”
Brooke Todare, a board member of the Phoenix Women’s Sports Association, played golf for Sr. Lynn at Xavier.
“We wanted to create an award that recognized someone in the community who has paved the way for girls and women in sports,” Todare said of the decision to create the advocacy award.
“The girls playing sports today have the opportunities they do to continue playing sports in high school, college and beyond because people like Sr. Lynn stood up and made people listen to what these opportunities can do in our lives,” she said.
More than 700 girls have received college athletic scholarships to continue playing sports because of the programs Sr. Lynn developed, according to Todare.
“She truly cares,” Todare said. “I can personally say that I am not only a better golfer, but more importantly, a better person for attending Xavier and playing for Sr. Lynn.”
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